Facebook says it’s all about privacy now. OK, sure.

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

Scott, where are you?

Rebecca Q.

The Wagner.

That's right.

A quick shout out to my dozens and dozens of messages.

Bitches, I am back.

Oh, my God.

Liberating you from thoughtful conversation.

Interesting, credible guests that have polluted this show for the last 14 days to tell you two things.

One, I'm too back.

That's right.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen.

The big dog has returned with one word and one word only.

Woof.

Oh, my God, Scott.

Too much, Carol?

Too much?

It shows a slight amount of inspiration

that you're using Wagner.

Come on.

All right, let's talk about end-to-end encryption.

You might have gone with Eminem or someone like that, but nonetheless, here we are.

Apocalypse.

Apocalypse stopped.

We got to get to the news.

Come on.

You were lying around on vacation or whatever the hell you were doing.

We've things to talk about.

Things have been going on.

Things to talk about.

Okay.

First of all, Facebook apparently has discovered privacy and has decided to become Snapchat.

That's what I understand from Mark Zuckerberg's recent blog post or whatever, one of his new blog posts.

So, Kara, how come I feel lied to here?

I mean, let's be honest.

He could give a shit about privacy.

If he found out someone had syphilis and could sell it to LaRoche for a penny, he'd say, I'm not going to do that.

I need to find out 100 million people who have syphilis so I can make real money.

What are you hearing?

You're dialed in here.

Use any example but syphilis.

You really could have.

It's a great word, isn't it?

Couldn't see like soccer or something like that.

Enjoys

kombucha.

You say soccer, I say syphilis.

Okay.

Let's call it a whole thing.

All right.

Here's what's going on.

Mark Zero wrote a post.

He said that he suddenly has discovered, oh my goodness, people like privacy.

I've done a little reporting, reportage on this, and from what I can understand, they have seen the data, and it is not good for what Facebook does for a living, which is, you know, public postings and all kinds of things.

People have been put off by that.

And he has discovered that Snapchat seems to be what people want.

So he's going to give them Snapchat, except the Facebook version, and really stress and integrate all the different services, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook.

I think it's all for the glory of Facebook, and the others are going to be leeched at, the ones who are popular, which were already doing that.

Instagram, Kevin Systrom Smartly had really leaned heavily into stories before he left.

And most people feel that if I've talked to, is that they're essentially acknowledging that their main business is problematic, is problematic and eventually troubled because the data, Mark does everything based on data.

And the data is telling him this is the way to go.

And so I thought his post would add a lot more credibility if he'd been up front and said, this is how we're going to make money.

Any thoughts on what this means in terms of the business model?

Well, there's two things.

One is it would be nice if he admitted they had problems with privacy.

Like he'd said, we are the problem, and so we have decided this.

But he doesn't care.

You're right.

He doesn't care.

Again, he focuses on the data.

Every decision he makes is based on data, I think.

And as nice as he is personally, I think he doesn't care.

You're right.

Or hasn't thought of it, at least, which is a kind way of doing it.

I think what they're trying to do is trying to be we chat.

Now, like, because messaging really works, messaging and messaging and communications.

And he has already, he's always said, tried to mush messaging and social media together, and they're not the same thing.

And so now he's, that post essentially said to me, social media is a little fucked, and we, messaging is great.

And so it's very different.

And that's one thing Snapchat has always said.

Communications is very different.

And they have really leaned into it.

The problem is they're small, they're super innovative and inventive, and Facebook has stolen pretty much all their good ideas.

But they were correct in directionality.

And so I think they're trying to go into the WeChat, Snapchat kind of

direction, from what I can tell.

And so WeChat makes plenty of money doing that.

And so that's what I ⁇ it's going to be a tough thing, but they did it before with mobile.

They weren't in mobile, and then they were.

So I think that's what's going on here.

Yeah, there's so much here, and you touched on the macro factors that the world is heading towards messaging.

And

I'm sure your kids have been told this.

Oh, my kids don't use Facebook at all.

They use Snapchat, and they sometimes use Instagram stories, but not that much because they don't like them.

They think they're performative.

But they definitely like private messaging quite a bit.

And with a group of people, but private.

Yeah, because they're told over and over that everything's going on your permanent permanent record if you don't.

That's not why.

I think they just like it.

But you don't think they've been lectured to be very careful about publicity.

I think they value.

I think they like it.

I think Evan Spiegel was right.

People like to use it this way.

I think you can watch them use it really carefully, and they use it as a communications tool and an entertainment tool at the same time.

But they could just as easily use an open format.

I think they see the value in ensuring the ephemeral nature of something and that it goes away and that it can be a little bit more irresponsible and be young.

So

the economic, there's a lot here.

One, I think it helps them, if you will, continue to abdicate responsibility around content because they won't see this stuff.

Right.

If Mayana Marie's military start putting out content that motivates people to do horrible things, they can say, well, not our bad.

Well, if they allow those private messages to be large,

they have pulled back on that.

Sometimes the private messaging platforms can only be so many people.

They're not going to allow it to be 100,000 people.

They're definitely walking away from the public part of Facebook, it looks like.

The other, and I think there's two other things.

The other thing is, and I think this is the most dangerous thing that's not being reported about, is that they're trying to aggregate all three apps into one sort of seamless messaging or communications platform that covers 2.7 billion people that would be increasingly difficult to untangle, thereby potentially circumventing antitrust, which I think is sort of a large number of people.

That's right.

Oh, I hadn't thought of that.

Smart, Scott.

There you go.

I'm here for a reason.

And And I think that's really, you're absolutely right.

I think one of the things, someone who knows a lot about this, was like, it looks like Zuckerberg is sort of, you know, the captain goes down with the ship.

He's not going to go down with this ship.

He's going to get off the ship and find a new ship and leave all the other billions on board.

You know what I mean?

It was a real abdication of his business in a weird way

to another direction.

And

he's within his rights to do that.

But I do think they've realized and seen the data that their business is not one that's going to continue continue in the way it's been perpetrated by them.

Well, and to be clear, and you know, I do believe he's a broken sociopath, but he's also a genius business person, and this is where it's headed.

Yep.

And that is,

I think that, actually, I think Bill's a very decent man, but anyways, I agree, but he's like him.

And well, you didn't know Bill back in the day.

I'm just telling you, he's that way.

William?

Yes.

Because I'm so much, because I'm so young.

No.

Anyways.

He's not a pleasant character.

Not a pleasant guy.

Anyway, so and then

I I think the third leg of the stool here is that you mentioned WeChat.

The one thing the Chinese platforms have done really well is integrating payments into their platforms.

Yep.

And this encryption and then this talk of a Facebook currency slash Facebook coin, you can

explain that to the people.

It's really interesting.

I think it's probably the most underreported story, and that is Facebook is talking about a coin that would be different than Bitcoin, because Bitcoin is essentially a currency.

And a currency is when two parties agree that something is worth something.

So you can have a fiat currency.

We agree this green piece of paper actually is a store of value.

But what they're talking about, as I understand it, is having dozens or even hundreds of currencies deposited to back up this coin, such that if you potentially see something you like on Instagram, you could literally just sort of double-click it and it's on its way.

And the two biggest frictions I think in technology from a consumer standpoint are one, are very mundane.

One is charging.

Charging is like the bane of of my existence.

And then two, payments.

It's very difficult to transfer money securely.

It's very difficult to pay for something.

I'm flying down to Florida last night.

I pull up whatever it is, Go-Go on Delta.

And the hassle is putting in your credit card, getting it wrong, the CBC number.

I pay with miles.

It really is a tax.

You pay with miles?

I do.

That's just strange.

Anyway, so...

Miles.

I fly everywhere.

Go ahead.

Give them away.

No, not to you.

I need it.

I'm back to the corner.

They're trying to, we're going to talk about that in a minute, but so they're going to create a currency.

They want to jack you into their system, essentially.

Yeah, which is really exciting because when I think about someone I'd like to have greater control over the global economy, it's Mark Zuckerberg and Shell Sandberg.

So this is, but it's really

production, as they say, is when he had it on the bottom.

I think this is all marked because it's all data-oriented.

I think it's completely.

There's moving to, you know, skating to where the puck is in terms of private messaging.

There's payments.

There's continuing to be able, in my view, abdicate responsibility around any sort of editorial control over the content.

And there's potentially moving to kind of a seamless global currency or payment platform.

So again, I think this is a genius business move and

quite frankly, just really fucking frightening.

I think this company has way too much control.

And it should be, you know, another reason why it should be broken.

Or maybe they can't do it.

Look what happened to Bill Gates.

Remember when he all all of a sudden discovered security after having the Swiss cheese of a software platform?

You know, oh, security.

People like security.

And Apple have been doing it forever.

And then suddenly he got, or the same, when Bill Gates got the internet.

Oh, the internet.

Not these clothes.

He's very similar.

I'm writing a conference.

I'm going to talk about this.

It's a very similar to a Gatesian move.

And Gates is always well known as the best businessman, not the most visionary.

person and somewhat

you know he had for a long time that malevolent kind of

yeah but i I think the move or the outside intervention that changed the world as it relates to Microsoft was the DOJ moving out of the market.

So let's talk about that because I think that's really smart.

They mush them together so they can't take them apart.

Who was hired, just hired by in Congress on a congressional panel that oversees antitrust, Lena Kahn.

Explain for the people who she is, Scott.

You love Lena Kahn.

Do you love Lena Kahn?

I do.

She's brilliant.

She's a gangster lawyer who, as a law student at Yale, published kind of the seminal piece saying we need to get away from this consumer test or pricing as

consumer harm as evidenced by pricing as the means of determining antitrust and go back to this Brandisian notion of sort of more power in the channel and I mean she has had a huge

Brandisian is that what it's called the old Brandisian

approach to antitrust that is right so explain what that means it's a different look at the because if you cannot show consumer harm because Amazon works so well for example or Google's so great like that you can't show consumer harm as easily, which is one of the tests.

It's more about power in the channel and if you're suppressing competition, regardless of what happens to the end consumer.

And that used to be the antitrust test.

And I think we're headed back there because it's impossible to really do consumer harm tests, one, when the end product is free.

And two, we're in this unusual trope of an environment where there are certain companies that are able to become

most valuable companies in the world, especially Amazon, without ever getting to meaningful profitability, meaning they can soak up market share by continuing to offer lower, lower prices without ever having to compete fairly, so to speak.

Well, I do want to get into this.

Everything's subsidized, like these IPOs for Uber and Lyft and stuff like that.

It's all about that.

So this is a big deal.

And Silicon Valley is super shock up by this, I think, and they should be, because antitrust, she's a comin'.

She's a comin', and she is not pleased about the situation.

And I think it'll be interesting.

Speaking of which,

I will be interesting, Amy, interviewing Amy Klobuchar at South by Southwest, where you are also coming.

And that's a big thing for her.

She's also on the antitrust committees and has talked about these issues.

And is certainly,

aside from all the comb stuff and all the boss stuff, she's quite adept at some of this.

One of her pillars of her presidential bid is to regulate tech.

Yeah, and maybe you've heard more than I have, but my sense is they're all sort of jumping on this notion of power is bad and the concentration of power among big tech is something we need to look at.

But I haven't heard any of them really outline outline what they mean by that.

Is it antitrust?

Is it FTC?

Is it DOJ?

And by the way, Lena is just sort of the tip of the iceberg here in terms of some of these immunities.

I think 2019 could arguably be referred to as the year, hopefully, that immunities are kicking in because not only is Lena Kahn going to work for Congress, the FTC has set up a 12-person subcommittee to look at antitrust.

We see France, and unfortunately we don't really have time to get into the story, but France has passed legislation saying, all right, big tech, we give up.

Your tax lawyers are smarter than our tax authorities, and we're going to charge you 3% of top-line revenue, which I think is a really interesting move, and we're going to see more of it around the globe.

But there's a lot going on, but I haven't seen a candidate yet really say, X, Y, and Z, this is how we would break up Facebook, or we need to go to the next one.

I am going to ask this of Klobuchar because she's a significant person on a significant committee who has talked about these issues.

So that's one of the questions I'm going to ask her.

What

should I ask her?

I'm going to tell you who I'm interviewing, and then you and I are going to be at Pivot at South by Southwest.

That's right, live in front of a studio.

A lot of barbecue in our face kind of thing.

There you go.

So

I'm going to go through them.

Give me a question.

Klobuchar, do not say com.

So

the thing that bothers me most about Senator Klobuchar, what I would want to know is not the comb or being angry or being a bit of a jerk.

It's, okay, there's a lot of people who have that reputation in positions of leadership.

The thing I found most disturbing about those reports is that she actually got in the way of people's careers when they decided to leave her office, that she was vindictive and purposely tried to parental leave to

make it difficult for them to get the next better job.

And I think there's a general code among bosses and leaders that when young people leave your organization, you err towards trying to help them.

And I think it's a very poor reflection on her character.

That's a really good question.

I'd want to know.

It's one thing to be a jerk.

It's one thing to be mean, but are you vindictive?

And because that's just not the kind of character.

That's a great question.

We have enough of that in the White House.

We need to change vindictive.

He doesn't seem to have control of anyone who leaves.

They end up writing books about him.

What an idiot he is.

So

he can tweet at them.

The second one is Kathy Griffin, who got into a mess of trouble with putting that tweet on the internet and that photo of Trump's head.

It was a comical thing, but people were quite offended by it.

So

that's what she said.

So I'm interviewing her.

And she has a new documentary about what happened.

Kathy Griffin?

Yeah.

Yes.

There's a new documentary about her, about about call, you know, it says, I forget what it's called, but you know, she was essentially canceled.

She was canceled after the one thing and it went crazy on social media.

I've always thought she was quite a talented stand-up.

She's funny.

She's fearless.

She's fearless.

So what shall I ask her?

Oh, I don't know.

She was canceled.

And no one, the others didn't.

It was really funny.

She was just funny.

Just what's life like?

Or who else is?

God, you guys get interesting.

Wait, let me finish.

I'm not even done.

I want a question for Kathy Griffin and then Marguerite Vestiger.

Not as funny.

Marguerite Vestiger.

Will she hang with Scott?

She's my hero.

She's a classmate.

It's Sunday.

I know her pretty well.

My question for Marguerite Vessier is: what is she doing next?

What does she want?

What would be the ideal next thing for her?

Because she's leaving her.

Yeah, I don't know.

Something.

Kathy Griffin, I don't know.

Favorite, God, I don't know, favorite TV.

She's just

a person.

So that's three.

Who else?

Any other panels or anything else?

I have you.

I've got Arlen

Hamlin.

I've got Wendy Davis.

Wow.

I've got so much to go.

I've got lots of stuff.

And we have the Vox Media House.

When do you see it?

And my kids are coming.

You're going to meet my sons.

Nope.

And if you give me any trouble, they're very large young men and they will deal with you in the correct manner.

There you go.

You're bringing both your kids.

Both my sons, yeah.

Yeah, my son's looking at UT.

My son is looking at my youngest.

UT Austin.

Yep.

Yep.

Awesome.

I'm going on a conference.

That's great.

Yeah, you can't come to that.

But it's going to be fun.

The Vox has a cool house, Vox Media at the Belmont Theater, and we have all kinds of stuff.

We've got video games.

we've got mattresses on the ground, we got music, we got all kinds of stuff.

You're going to enjoy it.

It's really lovely.

I'm excited.

We'll wander over to the New York Times, one nearby, which is also I get to go to, which is fun.

There you go.

Yeah.

So, all right, wins and fails.

Wins and fails.

All right.

Well, we're going to do that after we take a break.

We're going to take a quick break, and then we get back to our show.

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Okay, we're here with Scott, who has returned

with a large music and stuff like that.

I thought he was going to use the Rocky theme song, but here he is.

So wins and fails, Scott.

Who is winning and failing

this time since you've been away?

You can do stuff since when you were away, too, if you want.

Oh, since I've been away?

Okay.

So my win, if we're going to go all the way back, is a guy who moves around with a walker but stands 10 feet tall, Elijah Cummings.

I thought he had one of the great moments of the last year.

I just thought he came, had incredible gravitas.

You know, the biggest loser, obviously, of that hearing, hands down, was the guy who decided to put a black woman up as a prop and to prove someone isn't racist.

I thought that was not only racist, but just generally just ridiculously stupid.

And Saturday Live had a good skit on that.

And then winner.

Who are your winners and losers?

And then I have a win.

Oh, gosh.

I just, I do feel that.

that at that hearing, I think Trump is not doing really well, but you never know with him.

He's like, you know, he's like Teflon in a lot lot of ways.

So I don't know.

He just seems to have, you know, lost here and there.

And his social media stuff is sort of petering out.

No one's, he does something crazy on social media.

Everyone's like, oh, is he yelling again over there on Twitter?

So I think there's some bit of, just as what happened when his show started to lag, and I, again, as you know, I've watched every single episode of The Apprentice.

You got tired of it.

Like, you're like, oh, stop talking.

And so I think, I think maybe he'll gin it up again, but I think people are tired of being in an outrage over whatever he says next.

So we'll see.

And I think the fail, I think the Democrats might have overextended with all their subpoenas.

We'll see.

Yeah.

And

what about, tell me, you had,

give me credit words, do, you had the best prediction of the last month, and that is the day before Amazon pulled out.

You actually predicted that.

What do you think of this letter that's been circulated by Cuomo and all these business leaders in New York asking them?

Trying to get him back?

They're not coming back.

That's not Jeff Bezos' way.

No way.

I agree.

He does not suffer fools.

I'll tell you that.

That is one thing about him.

And it's one thing I like about him.

But I don't see how they could be pulled back.

And think of the controversy if they came back, what they'd have to give them.

And, you know, they're better off doing what they're doing.

And they, you know, again, as you know, I thought the whole thing was a circus.

So,

you know, it would be nice for them to have a thing.

They should just open something up, just like Google has a big thing near Chelsea Market and Netflix has a big office in New York.

It just they should just have one.

Like, stop.

It's no big deal.

They have a big they should have been one in Washington.

They should have maybe one in in the Midwest, perhaps.

But this idea of multiple HQs is kind of insane, as far as I can tell.

I don't know.

I did the math here.

So supposedly 25,000 jobs for $3 billion.

So at L2, we created 150 high-paying jobs, which I believe entitles me to $19 million.

So with $19 million, I've literally thought about it.

I think you should wait for Cuomo to show up or to launch.

Well, okay.

I don't think it's that, people laugh, but I don't think it's that outrageous.

Small business creates two-thirds of the jobs.

I agree.

I agree.

So where's that?

It's $19 million.

And I figured it out.

The cement helipad costs $150,000.

I'm putting mine on the top of faculty housing, and we're union, so let's assume it costs $1 million.

Do you have a helicopter?

Well,

I've been looking at them on control.

I can get an Airbus A340 for about $3 million because I'm not greedy.

I just want a dual-engine Roto helicopter.

So I've got $4 million, so that leaves me $15 million,

which will get me a Chipotle Pulled Pork burrito bowl for the next 134 years.

So where's my helipad and my burrito bowl?

I've created these jobs.

And by the way, Tim Cook's not running around with his handout.

Apple's creating these jobs.

He's not.

That's what I mean.

Google.

Google's doubling the number of jobs in New York.

They don't have their handout.

So, Bezos, you know, finger off the camera and hand back in your pocket, boss.

Yeah, I know.

It's true.

Stop that.

Oh, my God.

Tasteless as ever.

There you go.

International travel

blockchain.

I am Hawaii, Kiri.

You know, it's interesting.

I'm going to be having Gavin Newsom, but you are also coming to the Code Conference in June, so we can ask him about this kind of stuff.

Like, he's, you know, he he has a state that has a lot of the tech.

And

it'll be an interesting question: is how do you, I'd love to know his thoughts on the Cuomo situation.

So I have a Gavin Newsom story.

They both have good hair.

Yeah, I had a guy.

In 1995, I thought I was going to be like crazy rich.

I started an internet company, and all the bankers were telling me I was like, oh, it's going to be suicide.

Oh, well, if I'm going to be super rich, it means I'm super important.

I should run for office.

So I started talking to people in local politics about running for supervisor in San Francisco.

And I went to this forum, and I met met this guy who had just become or was running for supervisor named Gavin Newsome.

And I shook his hand.

I looked at him and I talked to him like, that's it.

There's no fucking way I could ever be anything.

No.

This guy, I mean, literally, this is like 20 years ago.

And I remember meeting this guy and going, I don't know what this guy's going to do, but it's going to be impressive.

It's like, okay, he's super smart.

I really like Gavin.

Super articulate and like tall and handsome.

Beautiful skin.

Oh, my God.

The whole nine yards.

Wow.

He's just, he's in that way he's flawless he's actually a really interesting and complex person i think people you know he has complex because he was banging his campaign manager's wife what makes him you know what let him you know what standard what makes him complex there but for the grace of god what makes him complex

i'm just saying he well his current wife and 17 children he's like my brother oddly enough here's a weird thing about that my brother's been the anesthesiologist for his 19 children or whatever he at at the hospitals in california that he goes to my brother's been as anesthesiologist for my brother's the widest thing ever said.

My brother's been as anesthesiologist for his time.

Well, that's what he just is.

It's not his, his wife's when they have the babies.

Anyway, that's TMI.

But nonetheless, he's a lovely guy, and he'll be an interesting, it'll be an interesting questions.

He's turned his life around.

Let's just give Gabby.

I'm not sure it ever needed turning around, and there's a couple of speed bumps.

Yes, there are, but

he does that every, like, it's Wednesday for Trump, so don't even start.

Don't even start.

David News.

When he does bad things, it makes it more complex.

Yeah, but you know, the person in question

that happened to it, they all said it's fine.

Like, so let's just let them, it's not like

hooked up into Roger Stone and payments and Michael Cohen.

There's nothing like that.

And

I don't know if people ever want to talk about politics, but I can't resist.

Why wouldn't it, as Governor of California, tall, handsome, smart, complex, as you put it, why wouldn't he be mentioned more often as a candidate for president?

He's not going to run.

He said it.

He said it.

He said it already.

He might someday, but he's not going to run now.

Yeah, by the the way, speaking of friends, a friend of mine from business school, really impressive woman, Eleni Sokopoulos, is the lieutenant governor.

Oh, great.

That's great.

Well, I will be forever in his debt for doing the gay marriage thing when it was very unpopular.

Yeah, illegal.

He did it when it was illegal.

Let me just say leadership.

Leadership, leadership, leadership.

And when someone does that at a time where it really hurts them,

I'm going to be very loyal in that regard.

And I'm not an identity politics person.

I just showed leadership.

Good.

And I really appreciated that.

So win.

I just don't want to get out there another win.

Well, that's one.

I don't know if you felt this way.

We're about the same age.

I was actually quite sad when I heard about Luke Perry.

And

I don't know why.

I was trying to figure out why do I care about Luke Perry?

And he seemed like a decent guy.

Part of my youth, at least watching 902 and 0.

He was in a movie that, if you have Netflix, called Normal Life with Ashley Dudd, that was actually a pretty good movie.

Wow.

And I just felt bad for the guy.

And then the other guy I heard about that really sort of made me sad was to hear about Alex Trebek is not, is suffering pancreatic cancer and

slate stage, too.

So, you know, pulling for you for 100, Alex Trebek, a nice man, infinitely Canadian.

You know, I don't know if you're aware of this, but I wrote a very, it's become a very popular column in the Times this week.

Well, of course it is.

Of course it is.

There it is.

I don't know if you know this, but I write what has become a very popular column.

It was.

No, I wrote about my stroke.

My brother was not every one of my columns.

Listen, when I write about internet bylaws, it's not popular, even though I write about it.

I write about issues international.

But when I wrote about my stroke, I got dozens and dozens of people having a similar thing, many of whom survived, some of whom had people that didn't survive.

It was a really interesting thing to write about my own stroke.

I've learned so much about that happened.

When did that go down?

When did that happen?

Seven.

You should read the column.

It's seven years ago.

I had it in Hong Kong.

My brother saved my life.

He's a doctor.

The doctor that delivered

Gavin Newsom's children, or not delivered, was the anesthesiologist.

So I had a stroke in Hong Kong, and I was ignoring the signs and thought it was just a headache and just a weird thing.

And my brother said, get to a hospital right now.

You're having a stroke.

And I did within the, you have to get there within three or four hours to be able to be okay.

And what are the signs just so we can make this a public service announcement?

I did.

I wrote them in the thing, but you, tingling in my hand, there was ting.

I couldn't keep something in my mouth.

I had, I had, it's called dysphagia, which I garbled my words, several words, for a while, just for a short time.

I had a TIA, which was a mini stroke, it's called.

But if I hadn't gotten help, I could have died very easily.

So coming out of that, just quickly, coming out of that near-death experience or something that could have been really bad, anything, any way or approach to life that changed?

Well, yes, I became worse than I am now.

Yes, I talked about that in the piece.

Like one of the things I said, if you want to understand the roots of why I'm so considered so tough, it's like, I don't have time for this.

Like, I don't have time, you.

And my dad died of a cerebral hemorrhage, too.

So it all sort of made me think that we have little, little time on this earth, and I really don't know.

Oh, we do.

And it goes faster and faster.

Yeah.

And so instead of manifesting itself in niceness for me, it manifested itself in

God.

Come on.

What are you doing?

I'm not going to be nice.

I'm going to.

No, not nice, but I'm nice to my kids and stuff like that.

No, but it was more like, you know what?

No.

Like, I'm very outspoken.

So it's interesting.

It was good.

It was an interesting issue.

I was sad to see Luke Perry die.

It was very

sad, all right?

I love, I spent so much time watching 902.

Well, you know what?

It's not, let's give him his props.

It's not easy to play a high school student when you're 38.

I mean, no, no, that's real Thespian Reigns.

He was so good.

They were all good.

I love the kids at West Beverly High.

I could go into it.

I'm not going to do this alone.

Listen, we got to get to predictions.

Okay.

Let's get to predictions.

All right, Scott.

I'm not feeling very predictive, but I predict we're going to have delicious barbecue in South by Southwest.

I just hope.

Maureen Dowd thought the Mueller report would be out soon.

Yeah, so.

So that wasn't, that's not, that's continuing not to happen.

But she had a couple that actually did come true.

And then Lauren Good hoped Twitter would get better.

I don't think that's like

What is that?

Hopes Twitter got better.

Can you best their predictions?

Well, I don't know.

So mine actually circles back to Maureen Dowd, and that is she said something really interesting, and that was that she thinks the nation is scarred from the fact that we went through this financial crisis where people, incredible destruction of household wealth, and that no one went to jail.

And that society still hasn't forgotten that and holds the government responsible.

And that is one of the major reasons that people have lost so much faith in the government or don't or believe the game is rigged

so my prediction is around big tech and it and it

and it goes further into kind of Facebook is that I do believe that someone's going to go to jail from big tech and I believe if you think okay if you believe someone is in fact going to go to jail because we know things will get worse we know that more bad stuff will come out And if someone is the fall guy, if it's the company or the fall company, I think most likely it would be Facebook.

And this is more of, and

it's not a warning, but I genuinely believe this.

I think someone's going to go to jail.

I think it's most likely someone's going to go to jail from Facebook.

And the other thing I'm pretty sure of is it won't be Mark or Cheryl.

And so I don't have a lot of friends at Facebook, but I'm friendly with a lot of people at Facebook.

And my advice to them, and a lot of my kids who graduated from my class went to work at Facebook, that if you're ever in a room and people are making excuses or glossing over content that is motivating harm to other people, if you're ever in a room where they're talking about or glossing over editorial content that perhaps might be weaponizing elections, I think it's really smart and prudent to have memos to the file and to maybe voice.

Memos like Kelly and Donald Trump.

100% and voice your concern because Jared look what happens in these financial institutions.

Whenever there's a billion or $2 billion stolen or lost, it's never the CEO goes down.

It's some guy with a bad hair cut in Amsterdam who they say they always call him a rogue traitor.

So my prediction is someone's going to jail from big tech.

It's likely from Facebook, and it's not going to be the billionaire and his heat shield, Sandberg.

So I would say to all the young people working in these companies, if something sounds bad, make sure that you are articulating your concerns.

Well, I don't agree with you.

I think they're going to get off.

I don't think that's it.

Meaning nobody's going to jail.

Here's what I think.

I think big tech is not going to pay for big finance.

Big finance didn't have anything happen to it, right?

They just walked away with their zillions.

I think tech people are going to walk away with their zillions.

And I think that there will be, here's how, what it is, is Ocasio or

Warren, these ideas of taxing them.

That's where it's going.

And I think a lot of people do agree with the idea that these people make far too much money and don't pay enough taxes on it.

I think that's how it's going to come out.

And they will start to

get behind a lot of these.

If they do it right, and I know that Trump is trying to push back with socialism, socialism, his gang, I do think that there is a groundswell of these people do not pay their fair share.

And if they get hold of the Trump tax returns and then it shows that, I think it'll be, I think people will be like, wait a minute, just a second here.

That kind of stuff.

Well, not only people paying their fair share, but companies.

Here's a fun fact.

Do you know in Europe, Google has paid more in fines than they've paid in taxes?

That's amazing.

Isn't that amazing?

That's amazing.

Yeah, yeah.

Here's another fun fact.

I'm going off my tension here.

But median age in Europe is 42.

Do you know what the median age in Africa is?

Like 12.

It's 18.

Isn't that incredible?

But anyways, off track.

Yeah, the companies need to pay their fair share.

There's definitely, I think, a good backfire in the Democrats, this, what I'll call class, I do think it's class warfare saying that rich people are bad and we need to tax them.

I think they just need to change it to, well, let's have them just pay their fair share because right now they're paying less.

All right, so we're going to do it in South by Southwest.

It's time to get out of here.

I will see you in Austin.

You will meet my sons.

We will have such a good time.

We will go for barbecue.

When do you get there?

I get there, I think I'm there Friday afternoon or Friday evening, and I'm there until Sunday.

Good.

Well, we have a lot to go on.

I will show you on.

I know Austin really well.

We'll get on scooters.

We will have such a lovely time.

That sounds nice.

I'm looking forward to it, Carol.

All right.

We're getting, again, we're coming to a live audience, and we will see you there.

Rebecca Sinanis produces this show.

Nishat Kirwa is the executive producer.

Thanks also to Eric Johnson.

Thanks for listening to Pivot from Vox Media.

We'll be back next week with more of a breakdown of all things tech and business.

And it will be extra large because why, Scott, where will we be?

Austin.

Texas.

Texas.

That's right.

I'm sorry.

All my exes look at Texas in case you're interested.

No, they don't.

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